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Monday, April 25, 2016

2.12.10 Bertha Cloren (1882-1929)

Bertha Cloren was born on 22 August 1882 in Ardmore, Missouri, to John Patrick Cloren and Janet Ann Milnes, Irish immigrants who married after they arrived in the United States. John Cloren's surname was spelled Killoren in Ireland. When the 1900 census was enumerated, Bertha and her family lived in Nineveh Township, Missouri, and her father worked as a coal miner. He died in 1908 and in 1910 Bertha, her widowed mother, and siblings lived in Novinger, Missouri, a town in the Nineveh Township. Two of her brothers supported the family by working in the coal mines like their father.

Bertha married Alexander Muir on 13 June 1914 in the Justice of the Peace's office in Kirksville, Missouri. Bertha was nearly seven years older than her husband. Alexander had moved to Seattle the previous year and worked as a fireman for the city. The couple returned to Seattle and had five known children during the course of their marriage. Only three survived infancy, however.

The family lived 643 97th Street when the 1920 census was enumerated. According to the census, Alexander and Bertha owned the home. Alexander retired from the fire department later that year after an injury, and sometime before 1923 the family had moved to Whidbey Island, which is a large island at the mouth of the Puget Sound. The family moved to Everett, Washington, on 15 October 1929.

Bertha died on 19 October 1929 at Everett General Hospital in Everett of puerperal sepsis, prolonged, difficult labor and birth of hydrocephalic monstrosity according to her death certificate. Hydrocephalic monstrosity was a term then in use for a baby born with spina bifida. There is no record of the child's birth or death so my assumption is that it did not survive.

Books about Allied Families

The story of the James Wilson family of Topsham, Maine, who came to the United States in 1719 and over 20,000 of his descendants, living and dead, including Martha Brodie, great granddaughter of Robert Muir.